Documentary scrutinizing math education makes West Coast debut at SF International Film Festival
The 67th San Francisco International Film Festival begins Wednesday with a variety of screenings including the documentary "Counted Out," which will have its West Coast premiere Sunday.
The film takes a critical look at mathematics and the growing importance it has in our lives while exploring the fear and trauma many people have around the subject from school.
"In the 21st century with the technology that is driving our work, our lives, our play, and math is beneath the surface of that technology," said Vicki Abeles, the director of "Counted Out" and a former Wall Street attorney. "If only a few people get the math that you need to create those technologies that influence our lives, we've got a select few people who are shaping our experience of the world."
Abeles says she actually did well in math as a student including while studying it in college. But when she could not help her children with their math homework, she decided to take a closer look at how the subject was taught.
For five years she and a team mostly made up of Bay Area professionals have worked on the film ahead of its release this spring.
"If you think about the 20th century then you're thinking well you need to know enough math to function at the post office but in the 21st century we're in a different ball game here," an interview subject said in the "Counted Out" trailer.
The San Francisco Film Festival will run Wednesday through Sunday with multiple films playing at the Marina Theatre including "Counted Out" on April 28th. Organizers for the event say it is the longest running film festival in the Americas and providing a platform for film to be an agent of social change is an important part of the event.
"The world that we're moving toward has math everywhere and I don't mean this in like a 'There's math everywhere kids' kind of way, I mean something concrete and kind of dark," another expert in the film says from a portion of the trailer.
Abeles explains that the documentary wants people to see that thinking of oneself as a "math person" or a "non-math person" is no longer acceptable. She goes on to say that everyone can be mathematical and should feel empowered to ask questions about important issues related to finance and health. In fact, she says the film is not suggesting anyone needs to go back to school and study math again.
"I want everyone in our audience to feel seen by this film, so many of us carry a great deal of shame about our math experience in school and that impacts our ability to engage with the world," Abeles told KPIX.
The film explores how math plays a consequential role in the life of everyday people. One profile includes a woman in her 40s who struggled with the subject in school and saw career opportunities cut off, preventing her from supporting her family.
Another subject of the documentary shows how an incarcerated man who was up for parole but denied it based on a biased algorithm was able to reverse engineer it using data he collected to gain his freedom.
"I think it in order for us to identify the problems that we need to solve as a society and to come up with creative solutions for the problems that we all collectively face we're going to have better outcomes if we have more people at the table in these decisions," Abeles said.
Part of the appeal for screening the film in the Bay Area is not only because it serves as a homecoming for many who worked on the project. But also because of the proximity to Silicon Valley and the hope to influence those in that industry about their impact.
Abeles says that math can no longer be just numbers and formulas but must been seen as the language we use to make sense of it all.
"Math determines who has access to higher education, who has access to economic opportunity, and who has access to create the technology that is shaping our world," she said.
Tickets for the Sunday screening of "Counted Out" are currently sold out, but more information on the film and other offerings at this year's festival can be found at SFFilm.org.